illocutionary force is the way utterances do things

I've done a lot more reading since I last appeared. I would say my opinion of theory is becoming more nuanced. I am still struck by how some things that seem quite interesting and readable are considered on par with things that seem utterly awful and pointlessly convoluted. But I have also come to see that I am far from alone in my concerns, and am not joined in them only by the Neanderthals and paleoconservatives, if that's not redundant. I am beginning to feel that it might be possible to both detest some theory and be engaged seriously and vigorously with some other theory - that there may after all be a baby somewhere in this bathwater.

As I'm thinking about trying to get into a good school, I've been thinking about paper ideas as I've been reading. For those of you who might be able to follow this, my broad notion is to look at how one can apply speech act theory to fiction in such a way as to account for the undying popularity of the conviction that the author is not in fact dead - for the fact that many people develop strong affections or even stronger aversions for authors as much as, or more than, for their books. The idea is to look at how your average, unsophisticated reader might take a text to be a series of utterances by the author, utterances each with its own particular illocutionary force and therefore a personal act by the author. This illocutionary force would usually be indirect, I should think, and in blander sections might amount simply to, "I, the author of this text, assert that character A says: "You're the potato!" with, of course, "You're the potato!" being the printed text.

But I was thinking of the rather more interesting example of the use of the word "nigger" in Huckleberry Finn. Reams have been written about this from a moralizing perspective, but as far as I have seen so far, no one has "theorized" what exactly goes on when an unsophisicated reader reads one of the 203 passages with this word in it. I think few would dispute that it is something personal, and I would like to explore the ways in which it is experienced as a personal confrontation with Mark Twain or with "the author of Huckleberry Finn" or whatever.

Add to the mix, by the way, that most people in America have experienced this book as spoken language - given that it is generally read aloud in class. Indeed, it may be the most common experience of read-aloud literature in this country. I don't know if this is a welcome complication or not, given that, as I said, I'm trying to theorize the reader's experience, but as I say you must add it to the mix. When it is read aloud, is it experienced as the words and illocutionary acts of "the author," or of "the vocalizer," or as something else entirely?

By the way, speaking of the baby in the bathwater, I read Huckleberry Finn for the first time since childhood after reading a critical account of it, and was struck by two things. One, the common conviction that the critics missed the point, or perhaps rather that one cannot forget that the criticism of a text, however detailed or incisive, cannot in any way stand in for the text. The other, and this I should say became a developing feeling afterward as I read more criticism, was that while some were clearly off the mark, many on both sides had very good points, and being intellectually honest required admitting to that. I decided I in no way envy those who try to decide whether to teach this book to children, and left it at that.